As many of you know I have a long history of being part of the Phoenix VMUG and the Global board of director for VMUG. Now, as VMware employee I continue to support the VMUG organization however I can. Just this week they announced that users can submit a proposal to present their content at their User/Super Cons globally! This is a great opportunity for users to contribute to the virtualization community and be a thought leader not only to your VMUG community but your working peers too. Over the past almost 10 years I have presented multiple times at VMUG events, from keynotes to users presentation’s, and even open mic user discussions. In this blog post I wanted to show the process I took to submit a proposal. It’s a great primer to get you ready to submit your own proposal, not to mention I’ll put in some tips and tricks along the way.

START HERE:

First off — Keep this in mind: Submitting a proposal doesn’t mean you must have all your presentation content ready, it just means you are ready to submit an overview and outline of your session.

From that link you may notice there are many 4 different types of speaking sessions to choose from. This is great news as it allows you to choose a session type that aligns better to your goals. Maybe you have a topic you are very deeply engaged with and could carry a 60-90 minutes session, or maybe you got a quick 15 minute session topic in mind. Either way there is a session for that.

From the link above, move on to getting yourself ready to produce your talking points (See Below). I think this is great advice to get things ready, and these are things you’ll need to answer when you submit.

Understand submission proposal review process. My tip here: Figure our who is on this Planning committee and reach out to them for further success tips.

As of this writing (12/1/2017) the dead line to submit is December 8, 2017 for the Feb and April Events. It will stay open for others to submit for other events, but I would try to submit by 12/08 – Yes its s tight time frame, so get moving…

Finally, review the schedule and pick a session or session you’d like to present at. Keep in mind this is a community volunteer organization, and by submitting to present you volunteering your time, travel costs, etc. to do so.

One last note towards the bottom of the page – Got Questions? Questions can be directed to Molly Hewitt at mhewitt@vmug.com

NEXT SUBMIT THE PROPOSAL:

In this section I wanted to show you the fields you’ll need to fill in to submit a proposal. It should give you a good idea what you submit.

In the next section you will need to choose a topic focus. Be ready to make further selections as each topic focus has subcategories.

TIP: All topic focus categories have the same subcategories. Don’t over think this too much just choose what you think would be relevant to the listener.

Next choose your technical content level. For my session I’m keeping it at a 200 level as it meets with the content and over all them I have. I would recommend if you are a high level say, 300 or 400 GREAT this is the type of presentations VMUG needs, please submit those too!

Be specific when you fill out ‘Identify the need” Think of it this way… Why would you attend this session? What would you want to get out of a session like this? If you can answer those questions, then you are hitting the mark.

With your Session Description have a bit of fun with it, show your passion for your topic and show why others would enjoy this session as well.

Finally, on this page fill out the remaining questions, and click save and continue.

TIP: Before clicking on Save and Continue, make sure all fields are filled out, else the form will not alert you until you are at the end of this process. If you missed anything required then you have to go back and fill all the missing items which takes you through the process again. Yes, this happened to me

Next question is – Who is presenting? Add folks if need be.

Attestation is a funny word for “Confirmation” or ‘Agreement’ review them and if all are okay, check those boxes and click submit.

Finally, you get a long page with all the content and choices you made, review them and if okay click on continue

When you all done submitting you can now view your submission.

And that’s it… Good luck submitting and if you need any help with your submittal please do reach out I’m always glad to help!

If you like my ‘no-nonsense’ blog articles that get straight to the point… then post a comment or let me know… Else, I’ll start writing boring blog content.

For nearly 10 years, I’ve compiled lots information about my home labs. From time to time I would blog about items I was working. However, readers of my blog were starting to respond with – “We enjoy your blogs around home labs. However, it’s a bit hard contextualize this information from multiple blog posts.” And “where do I start with home labs” Most recently the VMware User Group asked me to co-record a session for home lab vs. HOL Of course, I did the Home Lab side of the recording but it got me thinking more about the listener and how I could really put a focus on Who, what, why, and how around home labs. After the recording, I realized my “Home Lab Generations page” (HLG)was in major need of an overhaul.

This is when I decided to change my Home Lags Guide to “HOME LABS: A DEFINITIVE GUIDE”. It took me a few months to transform the HLG into this new approach as it puts a strong focus on Home Lab design considerations. From there I used these design considerations to document and measure my 5 Generations of home labs dating back to 2008. In doing this I got a sense this design guide could help others to measure and plan out their home labs too.

Next Steps for the Home Lab Definitive guide:

I’ll continue to update it as I progress my home labs

I’ll continue to improve it over time but I’d love your feedback too

My hopes are you find this new guide useful and of value. Please post up your suggestions to help its continuous growth!

Also, if you are interested in applying these design practices to your home lab or even if you are just starting out, then reach out to me as I’d love to feature your design here on my blog!

If you like my ‘no-nonsense’ blog articles that get straight to the point… then post a comment or let me know… Else, I’ll start writing boring blog content.

Back in the day when I lead the Phoenix VMUG the other leaders and I put our attention on the quality of the event vs. trying to drive attendance. We knew producing quality events would lead to more users wanting to attend. Man were we right. Our first VMUG in 2008 drew a crowd of 65, not too bad for our first showing. However we worked hard, listened to our attendees, and in just 2 years time we built an event framework to support 300-500 users and 20+ sponsors ever quarter! The framework we created was so successful it was key in creating the framework for the VMUG UserCon.

Flash forward to October-30-2015 and one of the most EPIC VMUG events ever is about to take place in Phoenix! I never use the word epic unless there is something absolutely stunning. Example – Me doing a selfie drinking a soda is not epic. However – when VMware COO Carl Eschenbach, Principal Architect Rawlinson Rivera, Senior Technical Marketing Architect Doug Baer, Chris Wahl, Josh Atwell, Instructor lead labs, 30+ Partners/Sponsors, multiple breakout sessions, and cocktails at the end of the day come to your VMUG, then this is EPIC!

I know that was quite a bit to take in but like it said EPIC, for now I’d recommend registering for the event and downloading the VMUG UserCon App.